A Vision in Light: Nalini Malani’s retrospective at Centre Pompidou

Presented in Paris and Rivoli, this retrospective covers 50 years of creativity of Nalini Malani—a pioneer of video art and performance in India.

(Right) The poster of the retrospective at Centre Pompidou; (Left) A portrait of Nalini Malani

HIGH PRIESTESS OF ART

Participant in 21 Biennales—India’s first contemporary artist to have a retrospective at Centre Georges Pompidou—high priestess of contemporary Indian art, Nalini Malani’s retrospective will draw in an avant-garde crowd for this unique collaboration between the Centre Pompidou, Castello di Rivoli and Galerie Lelong in France and Italy.

Nalini Malani, The Job, 1997

Presented in Paris in 2017-2018, then in Rivoli in 2018, this retrospective in two parts selectively covers 50 years of creativity of the pioneer of video art and performance in the Indian art world. Malani stands as a transitional figure between modern art and contemporary art in India. Deeply critical of atypical Indian political debates and dialogues, she draws on iconography fed by specific cultural symbols to create layered works that ask for interpretation in multiple contexts.

HISTORIC B&W 16 MM FILMS

Nalini Malani, Onanism, 1969

Viewers are in for an art history lesson traversing the years 1969-2017 that highlight the literary and historical narrative of the genius artist whose works resonate across time and cultures. Centre Pompidou states that the most unique feature in this retrospective is the recently discovered B&W 16 mm films from the period between 1969 and 76, including Still Life, Onanism and Taboo that will have their world premieres in Paris.

On this occasion, Malani will reactivate a spectacular work from the Centre Pompidou collections: the “video/shadow play” Remembering Mad Meg (2007).

1969 AND A BOLEX CAMERA

Nalini Malani, All We Imagine as Light, Panel 9

In six months, Nalini Malani did three films and some studies using a Bolex camera and 16mm reversal stock. Two of her films Still Life (1969) and Onanism (1969) were explicitly concerned with the female subject. Still Life—a five-minute self-portrait, in which Nalini trains the camera on personal articles of clothing and books as they are dropped on a bed. In Onanism, Nalini used a crane shot while filming a friend prone to hysteria, lying on the ground suffering a series of physical contortions.

REVERSE GLASS PAINTINGS

Nalini Malani, Remember Mad Meg, 2007-2017

At a glance there are numerous videos projected through multiple transparent Lexan cylinders, on which Nalini Malani paints images that reference the Kalighat style practiced in Bengal in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nalini makes use of this genre to examine the power dynamics of transnational commerce in a globalized world and combines her own commentaries into its readings.

Her technique of painting on transparent surfaces was inspired by the genre of reverse glass painting, brought to India in the 18th century by the Chinese. The rotation of reverse-painted cylinders gives us a host of images in a shifting tableau of tales on gallery walls; sometimes imageries are accompanied by recordings of poems written by Malani.

IN SEARCH OF VANISHED BLOOD

Nalini Malani, I am Everything You Lost, 2016

At Pompidou, art lovers can dive deep into archetypes ripe with hurt and mystery in Nalini Malani’s captivating installation, “In Search of Vanished Blood” and some other works that have arisen out of allusions in literature and experiences.

Her ability to dovetail figures like Sita from the Ramayana and Euripedes’ Medea —the one an ideal of submissive self-sacrifice; the other an emblem of destructive fury—into her artistic statements, is ingenious.